Scarcely any country in today's world can claim to be free of intolerance. Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, the Sudan, the Balkans, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and the Caucasus are just some of the areas of intractable conflict, apparently ins...

What kind of literature is the Talmud? To answer this question, Daniel Boyarin looks to an unlikely source: the dialogues of Plato. In these ancient texts he finds similarities, both in their combination of various genres and topics and in their dial...

First established 150 years ago, Chicago Sinai is one of America's oldest Reform Jewish congregations. Its founders were upwardly mobile and civically committed men and women, founders and partners of banks and landmark businesses like Hart Schaffner...

This book presents, from the perspective of feminist jurisprudence and feminist and liberal bioethics, a complete study of Jewish law (halakhah) on contemporary reproductive issues such as birth control, abortion, and assisted fertility. Irshai exami...

Hungarian Imre Kertesz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 for "writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". His conversation with literary historian Thomas Cooper that is...

Modern Jews tend to relate to the past through "history", which relies on empirical demonstration and rational thought, rather than through "memory", which relies on the non-rational architectures of mythology. By now "history" has surpassed "memory"...

Tracing the introduction of coffee into Europe, Robert Liberles challenges long-held assumptions about early modern Jewish history and shows how the Jews harnessed an innovation that enriched their personal, religious, social, and economic lives. Foc...

"The Last Goodbye" is a book of pictures and poems inspired by the author's experiences during World War II in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland, and as a prisoner at Auschwitz, in the Kristianstadt labour camp in Silesia and finally liberation at Belsen. De...

This deeply informed biography of Walther Rathenau (1867-1922) tells of a man who – both thoroughly German and unabashedly Jewish – rose to leadership in the German War-Ministry Department during the First World War, and later to the exalted position...

This comprehensive book provides a well-rounded introduction to Israel – a definitive account of the nation's past, its often controversial present, and much more. Edited by a leading historian of the Middle East, "Israel" is organized around six maj...